In recent decades, the beef industry has undergone
a radical transformation -- the small cattle farmer has been all but replaced by
beef-processing companies that own huge feedlots and industrial meatpacking
plants. One result of this concentration has been inexpensive and readily
available meat; beef now costs half of what it did in 1970. Critics have
charged, however, that the new system is inhumane to the animals and may have
created new health risks. For a look at the pros and cons of the industrialization of the beef business, here are excerpts from FRONTLINE's interviews with Patrick Boyle, CEO of the American Meat Institute; Dan Glickman,
former U.S. secretary of agriculture; Dr. Robert Tauxe of the
Centers for Disease Control; Bill Haw, CEO of one of the nation's largest
cattle feedlot operations; journalist Michael Pollan; and food-safety expert
Dave Theno.

In November 2001, Michael Pollan bought a cow for $598 and chronicled its journey through the cattle system for The New York Times Magazine. "[M]y primary interest in this animal was educational," Pollan writes. "I wanted to find out how a modern, industrial steak is produced
in America these days, from insemination to slaughter." He details the effects
of feedlots -- what he calls the "urbanization" of today's cattle herds -- and
brings readers uncomfortably close to the realities of slaughterhouses' kill
floors. Pollan also discusses the "hidden" costs of feedlot beef: antibiotic
resistance, heart disease, environmental degradation, food-borne illnesses. In
the end, Pollan says that while the economic logic of the feedlot system is
hard to refute, "so is the ecological logic behind a ruminant feeding on
grass." (The New York Times Magazine, March 31, 2002)

Madeline Drexler argues that farm animals in this country live in unmatched squalor. "The site of modern meat production," she writes in her book Secret Agents, "is akin to a walled medieval city, where waste is tossed out the window, sewage runs down the street, and feed and drinking water are routinely contaminated by fecal material." And these kinds of conditions lead to problems. One
USDA study found that 50 percent of feedlot cattle carried the E. coli O157:H7 bacterium
in their intestines during the summer months; another study found that
7 percent of chickens sampled at slaughterhouses had salmonella and 30 percent
had campylobacter. Drexler is a former medical columnist for The Boston Globe and was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1996 to 1997. Here is her account of how contamination is pervasive in the meat industry.